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Does anyone other then me, think that Best Buy Ad isn't that great??

Cremer83

By Cremer83
in 2009

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TazErase

TazErase

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Gotta love those CRTs!:razz:

I still have the eMachine from last year ($299) and from the year before ($199) and both are working great. My mom did however have an HP she bought about a year ago die on her twice already. By the time most eMachines die the technology is outdated any way. I have a dell from 3 years ago that I spent about 7 times more on, yet I'm using my eMachine for $299 and retired the Dell because it is outdated. When you look for a computer it is cheaper to replace now than to upgrade. Trust me, I used to upgrade every year until it became cheaper to just replace them, oh, and stock up on external hard drives, lol. Can never have enough hard drive space. I would have gotten the 1.5tb in BB but I'm not standing on line just for them, I'm going to get the 1tb in Staples, no lines, plenty in stock. Then again the HD isn't usually a ticketed item but they will be gone unless you are near the front of the line.

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H_Hancock

H_Hancock

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Thank you for going to great length to prove my point! If you think that Celeron computers are the Bees Knees, than you have my sympathy! (Meant for everyone)Stop shopping the internet and get up, put some clothes on, and get out there and check the actual store pricing, and check for differences between the same brands, models, etc. It isn't a shocker that some deals will be found outside of Black Friday.:smart: EMachines also has the lowest reliability rating and return rate in the business. These throwaway computers were part of the reason that best Buy changed they way that they do business. I see fewer students out here now, and i am happier for it, because they will not be buying a piece of junk which will clunk out on them.

 

Sorry, I made no point for you. I was rebutting you and was pointing out that you were wholly incorrect in this comment of yours:

 

take a close look at the pricing schemes and the quality of the items from up to five years back, and you will see that the situation is not that much different, with a few exceptions being the Secret sales. if best buy had not done that, the two years prior to last year's sales would have been a bust also.

 

Looking back five years, there were great specials....and none of the listed computer packages were secret sales.

 

And no, I'm not saying Celeron processors are the "bee's knees" by any means, but on the other hand, they certainly aren't crap. Essentially, Celeron processors are simply the current generation processor that has a reduced amount of cache within the cpu. Back in '04, they were P4 cpus with reduced cache and lower bus speeds. Today, the Celeron processors are Allendale/Wolfdale based cpus (the two Core variants) with, again, reduced cache amounts and single cores, which accounts for their apparent lack of multitasking ability....that and the lower bus speed they run.

 

But the amount of cache doesn't make them junk or crap. It just means they're focused on the budget end of computing and aimed at those that have a need for basic computing....much like the netbooks are.

 

As for emachines being horrible, I disagree completely. I personally purchased one of the above mentioned desktop units each year for gifts to family members and every one is still chugging along. You have to remember, by '04, Gateway owned emachines---just like HP owns Compaq---and the quality and reliability had vastly improved to the point that the emachine computers were the equal, at least in durability and build quality, of the then current other budget builds from Gateway, Dell, HP, Compaq, etc. Those emachines in '04 and later in no way resembled the junk emachines from the original Korean manufacturer, in no way other than name.

 

As for the "gotta love CRT" comment, yes, I still have a 20" Sony Trinitron CRT monitor I refuse to part with, despite having 4 LCD monitors in the house. The colors are still rich, vibrant, has deeper and truer blacks than the LCDs, and suffers from no input lag like LCDs do. True, some IPS/MVA/PVA LCDs may rival the older CRTs with screen viewing color quality, those LCDs tend to be horribly expensive and still have a smaller viewing angle than CRTs.

 

I'm glad you have "all the toys" you need, but to essentially belittle others that look to Black Friday for providing affordable computers at great prices as being spoiled and not truly needing anything is just condescending. I do feel sorry for you and your dour outlook on the world and the people here and around you. Must be a sour, dark world you live in.

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Lidstrom

Lidstrom

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I was very unimpressed. That is good for me, though. One less inspiration to spend money. I am a value shopper, and I will wait for my price.

 

I bought one of those eMachines packages in 2006, I think. It had a Celeron D processor, which ran awfully w/ either 32-bit XP Home or Vista Basic. I put XP Pro 64-bit on it and it runs a whole lot better. It also ran very well with amd64 Linux installs.

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jaymacfla

jaymacfla

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Sorry, I made no point for you. I was rebutting you and was pointing out that you were wholly incorrect in this comment of yours:

 

 

 

 

Looking back five years, there were great specials....and none of the listed computer packages were secret sales.

 

And no, I'm not saying Celeron processors are the "bee's knees" by any means, but on the other hand, they certainly aren't crap. Essentially, Celeron processors are simply the current generation processor that has a reduced amount of cache within the cpu. Back in '04, they were P4 cpus with reduced cache and lower bus speeds. Today, the Celeron processors are Allendale/Wolfdale based cpus (the two Core variants) with, again, reduced cache amounts and single cores, which accounts for their apparent lack of multitasking ability....that and the lower bus speed they run.

 

But the amount of cache doesn't make them junk or crap. It just means they're focused on the budget end of computing and aimed at those that have a need for basic computing....much like the netbooks are.

 

As for emachines being horrible, I disagree completely. I personally purchased one of the above mentioned desktop units each year for gifts to family members and every one is still chugging along. You have to remember, by '04, Gateway owned emachines---just like HP owns Compaq---and the quality and reliability had vastly improved to the point that the emachine computers were the equal, at least in durability and build quality, of the then current other budget builds from Gateway, Dell, HP, Compaq, etc. Those emachines in '04 and later in no way resembled the junk emachines from the original Korean manufacturer, in no way other than name.

 

As for the "gotta love CRT" comment, yes, I still have a 20" Sony Trinitron CRT monitor I refuse to part with, despite having 4 LCD monitors in the house. The colors are still rich, vibrant, has deeper and truer blacks than the LCDs, and suffers from no input lag like LCDs do. True, some IPS/MVA/PVA LCDs may rival the older CRTs with screen viewing color quality, those LCDs tend to be horribly expensive and still have a smaller viewing angle than CRTs.

 

I'm glad you have "all the toys" you need, but to essentially belittle others that look to Black Friday for providing affordable computers at great prices as being spoiled and not truly needing anything is just condescending. I do feel sorry for you and your dour outlook on the world and the people here and around you. Must be a sour, dark world you live in.

Wow! That is quite an assumption you have there! Since you have no experience actually repairing these, and do not build them as I do, you really have no qualified opinion other than your own experience, which is your right to express. I did not belittle anyone for owning them, but i will point out that many more people have complained about these junk computers than have benefited from them. The archives as well as the internet in general is a graveyard of complaints to this effect. The computers and crt monitors are known in the industry as "throwaway computers". They are a joke, because they generate trouble when the establishments give them away, and then have to deal with all of the bad press for selling them in the first place.

It is a no win situation for them. I am glad that Walmart can be the charitable one this year. They can afford to absorb the loss when it comes to returns from budget minded consumers.

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jaymacfla

jaymacfla

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I still have the eMachine from last year ($299) and from the year before ($199) and both are working great. My mom did however have an HP she bought about a year ago die on her twice already. By the time most eMachines die the technology is outdated any way. I have a dell from 3 years ago that I spent about 7 times more on, yet I'm using my eMachine for $299 and retired the Dell because it is outdated. When you look for a computer it is cheaper to replace now than to upgrade. Trust me, I used to upgrade every year until it became cheaper to just replace them, oh, and stock up on external hard drives, lol. Can never have enough hard drive space. I would have gotten the 1.5tb in BB but I'm not standing on line just for them, I'm going to get the 1tb in Staples, no lines, plenty in stock. Then again the HD isn't usually a ticketed item but they will be gone unless you are near the front of the line.

We see all of those CRT monitors at yard sales. $5 mostly. People can't seem to give them away.:eek:Good luck on the Storage drive, I hope the Staples trip is a worthwhile one!:)
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H_Hancock

H_Hancock

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Wow! That is quite an assumption you have there! Since you have no experience actually repairing these, and do not build them as I do, you really have no qualified opinion other than your own experience, which is your right to express.

 

 

Wow! That is quite an assumption you have there!

 

In reality, I own a computer shop and have been building, repairing, networking businesses, etc., for well more than a decade. I entered the computer repair/sales/etc. scene back in '93, when I had to retire from my original line of work as an RN---ICU, ER---stress from the job made my Chron's disease worse and I had to quit.

 

So, I followed my interest in computers, began building my own back in the early '90's, worked in a small shop, got a lot of OJT, followed that with some formal education, opened my own business about 12 years ago and have been nicely successful with it. Granted, I'm located in a very small town, but I do well.

 

From my experience, most failures of computers are more software related and are typically self-inflicted by the user. Hardware failures, while they do occur, can be mitigated by choosing quality components, but that doesn't always stop that----got burned quite badly years ago by the IBM Deathstar hard drive debacle. But I see as many Compaqs, HPs, Dells as I see emachines fail from poor hardware....about a wash actually.

 

So, your poor and misguided assumption that only you have experience with pc's and no one else can possibly know anything is severely misguided. (My first computer build was with an Intel 8088 cpu.....turbo for a big 12MHz speed!)

 

Sometimes when you ASSume something, it comes back to bite you in your glutes.

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